Drabbles: Working Girl
by nebroadwe
Summary: Mangaverse. Winry pounds the pavement, and other things, in search of a job and in pursuit of perfection. No spoilers.
1. Overqualified

_This is for S. J. Smith, with best wishes for the success of her interview.  
Knock 'em dead! (Uh, you know what I mean.)_

_

* * *

_

Job-hunting during a recession makes most people desperate; Winry Rockbell just gets cranky. So it's inevitable that when yet another sweaty-palmed male chauvinist leers at her and suggests that he might be able find her an opening, if she proves ... _qualified_ ... she pulls a wrench on him.

"How about this?" she asks sweetly. "You give me the job because I'm a qualified _engineer_, and I won't crush your ugly supraorbital foramen."

Fortunately Granny wires the bail money without question, so Ed and Al need never hear about Mr. Sweaty Palms. One attempt at human transmutation is enough for a lifetime.

* * *

**Author's Note:** _Before anyone asks, the _supraorbital foramen _is the technical name for the eyebrow ridge. (I'm not a doctor, but I hang out with them a lot.)_


	2. Saturday Night

_This, too, is for S. J. Smith, who is too noble a soul to consider replacing someone's bath salts with something else. Probably.

* * *

__We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken.  
__Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world,  
the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether._

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "On Friendship"

**oOoOoOo**

The boardinghouse is stuffy in summer, chilly in winter, and smells of cabbage in all seasons, but since Winry only sleeps and stores her clothes there, these defects hardly signify. She reserves her ire for the cramped washroom, complaining relentlessly to the Elric brothers about its lack of a tub. Ed replies that baths are for babies and even Al wonders whether showering isn't more efficient. She always knew they were idiots.

Trudging home from work Saturday night, she barks her shins on the big tin basin and box of bath foam sitting outside her door and revises her opinion.


	3. Always Right

_This is for my brother in the business world._

_

* * *

_Only a week on the job, she's summoned to answer a complaint. Winry doesn't recognize herself in the condescending shrew of the client's report -- all she remembers is trying to persuade him not to trick his automail out with what Granny calls _phallic enhancements_. "They'd increase the load on the mechanism without a corresponding gain in function," she argues. "He doesn't need them."

"You're not here to decide what he needs," her supervisor replies. "Just give him what he wants."

"That's irresponsible!"

"That's customer service." He scribbles a note on the complaint. "Consider this your first warning."

Winry gapes, speechless.


	4. Clandestine Engagement

_This is for D. M. Stevens, with warmest wishes._

_

* * *

_Winry's contract forbids her to moonlight. The company, claiming the rights to whatever she invents while in its employ, on or off the clock, cannot disclaim liability for any maintenance or installation she does in her free time, either. So Winry keeps her best inspirations in her head and disappoints most clients by refusing to tinker outside the office. _Sorry; I need this job ..._

Ed's the exception, of course, taking her oh-so-casual suggestions to Riesenbuhl for Granny to implement and trysting with her in discreet hotels for adjustments. _It's like we're having an affair_, she teases, grinning as he blushes.


	5. Immediate Jewel

_This is for Katie, obviously.

* * *

__The customer is the immediate jewel of our souls.  
Him we flatter, him we feast, compliment, vote for, and will not contradict._

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

**oOoOoOo**

The receptionist catches Winry returning from lunch. "Mrs. Hart called," she sing-songs, waving a folded note and shrugging maliciously as Winry groans.

Everyone in the firm has worked on Mrs. Hart's leg. She attaches herself like a leech to new hires and sucks the life from them with passive-aggressive complaints: _It's such a nuisance, but I don't suppose you _can_ do anything about the ankle sticking ... Don't worry about the noise the knee makes; it only throws my balance off a trifle ..._

Winry pins the latest message to her corkboard with a scraper, three punches and a knife.


	6. Playing Percentages

Paninya comes to visit, testing the waters: _If you can make it in Central, maybe I can, too._ She murmurs polite _ah_s and _hmm_s throughout her tour of the clinic, but over tea afterward she remarks, "Kinda soulless, isn't it?"

"You could say that," sighs Winry.

Paninya butters her toast. "So, when are you opening your own shop?"

"As soon as I have the money."

"Well, hurry up!" Paninya urges, pointing the greasy knife at Winry. "When I move here, I want my 'old friends' discount."

"Ha! Only if I get one, too," Winry counters.

They shake on it, laughing.


	7. Perspective

_It is commonly said by farmers, that a good pear or apple costs no more time or pains to rear, than a poor one;  
so I would have no work of art, no speech, or action, or thought, or friend, but the best._

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

**oOoOoOo**

Ed zigzags between market stalls like an oriole; Winry follows sedately, favoring her aching feet. "Hey, apples!" he calls, and while he investigates the barrel, she counts the months since she last baked a pie, or cooked anything more complicated than a boiled egg on her (clandestine) hot plate.

"That's five cens, mac."

Winry looks up to see Ed scraping the coins from his pocket, an apple plugging his mouth boar's-head fashion. He bolts half the fruit at once before noticing her smile. "What?" he asks mushily, cheeks stuffed with pulp.

"Nothing," she answers, selecting an apple for herself.


	8. Wager of Friendship, Part 1

_... the best of life is conversation, and the greatest success is confidence,  
or perfect understanding between sincere people._

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

**oOoOoOo**

When Ed overtakes her in the street, demanding to know why she's hitting up that bastard Mustang for money, Winry's just glad he didn't catch her at the clinic. "Where'd you hear that?" she demands in return. "And keep it down!"

Somehow Ed finds his indoor voice. "Havoc said Mustang said you're starting your own shop, and -- " He shuts his mouth on something olive-bitter, to judge by his scowl.

"'And?'"

Ed snarls, then bursts out, "And that you're too ... _cute_ to fail!"

Ah, the usual masculine vote of confidence. Winry's sigh emerges as a snicker; flushing, Ed stomps away.


	9. Wager of Friendship, Part 2

The Elrics ambush Winry in her usual booth at the diner. She taps a pencil against her business plan as Al maneuvers the conversation around to her investors. "I didn't ask Mr. Mustang for money. I asked Ms. Riza." (Though she supposes, belatedly, that it amounts to the same thing now they're married.) "And I don't see why it's any of your business," she adds, glaring at a pinch-lipped Ed.

"Um," Al begins, but his brother elbows him silent and bellows, "Idiot! _Why didn't you ask us?"_

The hovering waitress goggles. Winry turns her scarlet face to the wall.


	10. Wager of Friendship, Part 3

She pulls a brush through her damp locks, wincing as it meets another tangle. A hundred strokes each night, per her mother's long-ago advice, doesn't prevent knots -- maybe Mrs. Gracia knows a better remedy ...

_Why didn't you ask us?_

Winry drops the useless hairbrush, grimacing. She couldn't say _You're not rich _with Mrs. Gracia backing her gamble, as well as Granny and Ms. Riza. She might've settled for _It's just us girls_: apart from the bank, she won't owe a man a cen. But ...

_None of your business!_

It's too painful to admit she never thought to ask them.


	11. Wager of Friendship, Part 4

Ed stands her dinner -- _not_ at the diner. "I'm sorry."

Winry nods, picking at her salad. Ed plows on, rehearsed and stiff.

"I was out of line. Your shop is your business. But -- if I -- " He stumbles now, off-script, his amber gaze skittering across her face. "If we could -- if you ever need -- or want_ --_ just ask, all right?"

His incoherent sincerity unnerves her; she's not sure why. But Granny didn't raise a coward: she looks him in the eye, holds out her hand. "All right."

Ed shakes it, smearing his automail with dressing for her to wipe away.


	12. Neophyte

_This is for S. J. Smith, as an unbirthday present, her birthday having slipped me by somehow ..._

* * *

_Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm._

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

**oOoOoOo**

Winry leaves the clinic on her last day of probation with a spring in her step and a satisfactory evaluation in her hand. Tomorrow (_finally!_) she'll be allowed to see clients unsupervised. No more tag-team diagnoses -- no more delays while the boss scrutinizes her plans. New girl gets the walk-ins, of course, but Winry knows that won't last long: _next month, my own clients -- next year, my own shop!_ She grins and whistles a fanfare as she turns onto the avenue ...

... where she's ambushed by her colleagues and dragged to the nearest pub. New girl gets the first round, too.


	13. Bank Holiday, Part 1

_These are for the LiveJournal user known as kanja177, as compensation for One of Those Weeks._

_

* * *

Nature invites to repose ... there is no petulance, no fret;  
there is eternal resource and a long tomorrow, rich and strong as yesterday._

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

**oOoOoOo**

This sticky summer morning the bus seems full of shrieking children and their already exhausted parents. Elicia bounces in her seat, pointing out every landmark en route to Central Reservoir, her period of oscillation shortening as they approach the park gates. "We're here, Auntie Winry, we're here!" she announces, and climbs over her mother's lap to collide with a fat man wrestling a picnic hamper as wide as he down the aisle. "Sorry, mister!"

While Gracia pursues her disappearing daughter, Winry helps wrangle the hamper, transmuting a peevish grumble into a grunt of thanks. Customer service teaches its own alchemy.


	14. Bank Holiday, Part 2

The narrow beach is an album quilt of blankets, so Winry and Gracia spread theirs on the grassy knoll above the boardwalk, between the roots of a white ash, and take turns accompanying Elicia into the water. Winry shows her adopted niece how to float on its warm surface, her own toes twitching in the chilly, spring-fed zone beneath. Spelled by Gracia, she defiantly reads a bodice-ripper recommended by a client, watches the ash's pale leaves flutter against a periwinkle sky, or fends off potential mashers with feigned slumber.

On holiday, a snore's as good as a wrench.


	15. Bank Holiday, Part 3

Elicia falls asleep on the ride home, her damp head propped on Winry's shoulder. Winry gazes out the window, but the long-shadowed verges and twilit roofs pass in a blur as her mind leapfrogs the present evening for the coming dawn. _If I bleed Mrs. Hart's hydraulics first ..._

Gracia reaches across her drowsing daughter and touches Winry's knee. "Leave tomorrow to tomorrow," she advises.

Winry looks at Gracia, then at her own hands, curled around imaginary tools. She nods, bracing Elicia as the bus swings around a corner, and pulls the bodice-ripper from her bag to avert temptation.


End file.
